Free Linna : Historical Romance (The Brocade Collection, Book 5) by Jackie Ivie Page A

keep them that way. Then she was searching for that numb state she’d found when her perfectly ordered and structured life had first started falling apart.
    It didn’t work.
    Harsh breathing filled her ears and the heat grew apace with it. Large hands moved down her back, past her buttocks, separating her thighs and moving her into a position he must want then making certain of it by propping her into a sitting position. Linna was swaying in place and had to lock her knees to keep from keeling over. She wasn’t touching the floor. She didn’t even know where it was. She was straddling his waist to stay astride him, bearing the intense fire of him through her petticoat and the fine linen of her pantaloons; reeling with that sensation, stunned by the intimacy, and doing her best to ignore how her palms were tingling from being in contact with his chest.
    He started moving his hands again, shifting them in spurts of motion up her arms...to her shoulders, while her heartbeat accompanied each gesture as if bidding him onward . Linna barely kept from shoving him away when as he reached the little bustles of her sleeves. And then he was trying to force them down.
    She slit her eyes open and froze . There was a snarl across his face, a glint of moisture coating what she could see of his eyes, and nothing else. He might as well be an animal. Linna’s eyes went wider. Her back stiffened and nothing on her felt anything except locked into position. He was still pulling at her sleeves, not realizing he had to untie the bow between her shoulder blades. She felt the ribbon raise a welt across her back as he kept stretching it until it ripped free.
    Linna heard the sound, felt the air, and started shaking . Realms of shivers flew down her, coating her skin with what she recognized was fear. She turned her face away, clenched her teeth, and fought the emotion. Linna Daniels feared no man! She never had and she wasn’t starting now. She’d bargained for what he wanted. And that was all he was going to get.
    “What is it?”  The voice matched the snarl .
    Linna shook her head.
    “Avoidance isn’t what we bargained for, lady,” he rasped.
    “And...ra vishment is?” she whispered the answer.
    He sucked in air so viciously, she fell into the well of his abdomen with it . And then he let it out, making her rise again. Linna kept her hands right where they were on his upper chest, where she could feel parts of him tensing and shifting. Still. Her palms were itching from the contact. That was odd. She’d committed herself to numbness and was usually very good at reaching it.  
    He went to a sitting position, moving more ribbons of muscle against her inner thighs,  then he was standing and taking her with him . Linna kept her face averted, her jaw tightly clenched, and chased the numb feeling back into existence. She knew he had her in his arms, felt the strange sensation of being carried  as he walked, moving soundlessly, but with a slight sway to each step. She knew where he was taking her, too...his bed. She barely felt it when she reached the mattress. She didn’t open her eyes to see any of it. She wasn’t about to face anything or anyone. No one could make her.

     
    CHAPTER SEVEN
     
    Cord sighed heavily . The mattress moved with his weight as he joined her on it. He blew gently on the skin of her throat, watched the quick rise and fall of her bared breasts and the satisfactory tightening of their crests. He wasn’t a rapist. A soulless wretch, destined for hell - yes. That he was. But a ravisher of women? Never. Cord Larket was famous for the satisfaction he gave. Wasn’t that why he’d agreed to this in the first place?
    “Linna?”  He whispered it at her ear and nuzzled the skin just below her lobe . “Linna? It’s Raoul. Your lover. The man who will be your husband. The man who would never harm you. Ever. Such perfection should be tasted, relished, savored. Never taken and harmed. Linna?”
    He said more